October 23, 2023

Congresswoman Lee Celebrates 2025 American Women Quarters Honorees

WASHINGTON, DC – The United States Mint announced the following 2023 honorees for the American Women Quarters program, made possible by Congresswoman Lee’s Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020:

  • Ida B. Wells – investigative journalist, suffragist, and civil rights activist
  • Juliette Gordon Low – founder of the Girl Scouts organization
  • Dr. Vera Rubin – astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation
  • Stacey Park Milbern – activist for people with disabilities
  • Althea Gibson – multi-sport athlete and first Black athlete to break the color barrier at the highest level in tennis

“This final selection of extraordinary women to be honored on the American quarter could not be stronger,” said Congresswoman Lee. “From Ida B. Wells to Althea Gibson, I am especially pleased at the inclusion of such incredible women of color who used their lives to break barriers and stand up for racial justice. I thank everyone who has played a role in memorializing these remarkable women leaders for posterity through this program.”

This is the fourth and final year of this historic program featuring coins with reverse (tails) designs emblematic of the accomplishments and contributions of American women. The Mint facilities at Philadelphia and Denver will manufacture these circulating quarters honoring these women.

Authorized by Public Law 116-330—the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020—the American Women Quarters Program features coins with reverse (tails) designs emblematic of the accomplishments and contributions of prominent American women. Contributions come from a wide spectrum of fields including, but not limited to, suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, and the arts. The women honored come from ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse backgrounds. As required by the public law, no living person will be featured in the coin designs, and thus all the women honored must be deceased. The Mint is issuing five coins with different reverse designs annually over the four-year period from 2022 through 2025.

The obverse (heads) depicts a portrait of George Washington originally composed and sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser to mark George Washington’s 200th birthday. Though her work was a recommended design for the 1932 quarter, then-Treasury Secretary Mellon ultimately selected the now-familiar John Flanagan design.

The obverse design is common to all quarters issued in the series. Inscriptions are be “LIBERTY,” “IN GOD WE TRUST,” and “2023.”

As stipulated by the public law, the Secretary of the Treasury selects the women to be honored following consultation with the Smithsonian Institution’s American Women’s History Initiative, the National Women’s History Museum, and the Congressional Bipartisan Women’s Caucus.